


Change of Fate

by CorsetJinx



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-04 17:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorsetJinx/pseuds/CorsetJinx
Summary: Everything progresses as it should, right up until it doesn't. This time, this once, a change is made.





	1. Chapter 1

He knows that he has lost when the wheel of his chariot will not budge. No matter how he strains to lift it the wood stays firmly stuck. Mud turns his grip slippery. Exhaustion eats at him, nipping at the heels of cold dread. Beneath his feet the Earth is hard. Unforgiving. She has kept her word, in the end.

All his curses are laying themselves against him, one by one. He has forgotten the knowledge given to him by Parashurama. The battle continues on around him. When he tries to stand the mud which interfered with his hands now weighs down his legs. It feels insurmountable when he strains against it, lifting his head as he sets a hand against the side of his chariot.

Karna knows what he will see. He has known for a long time now. Vows made in anger and rivalry are still binding as chains and he had promised Kunti that only Arjuna will face the full extent of his strength.

Arjuna has already raised Gandiva, an arrow between his long fingers. Karna is too far away to see Arjuna's expression but he has suspicions about what it looks like. He focuses instead on the glorious image Arjuna makes - the draw of Gandiva's string perfect and sure.

He knows, of course, that this will be the arrow which ends his life. Karna thinks, for a moment, of how different things might have been. How much might have changed if the choices of his life had been made in a different order.

The arrow flies towards him. He tracks it with a heaviness in his chest, closing his eyes only once to push aside the feeling which bristles next to his heart. When he opens them again Karna is resolved, smiling past the deadly arrowhead aimed towards his neck at Arjuna.

He holds no grudges. With this, he need not worry any longer.

It is barely a second later that Karna feels the warmth against his back. Brilliant and burning, it reaches over his shoulder as he feels his eyes widen in surprise. A hand, clawed and veined in gold as his own had been, before he'd sacrificed his armor, takes hold of Gandiva's arrow and without hesitation crushes the shaft between powerful fingers. In the same moment three more such hands curl around him, one applying an impossible kind of strength into trying to turn him away from the scene.

Karna cannot look away. Through the fingers of the hand cradling his face he can see Arjuna. Shock radiates from his half-brother. From Krishna, the charioteer.

"Not this time." A voice Karna has heard in dreams fills the air. It crackles with power, envelopes him in warmth. "Not again."

The backs of his eyes prickle. His vision swims, obscuring Arjuna's retreating chariot. Where those protective hands touch him Karna thinks that he might burn. _Surely_ he must. No one not protected by a miracle could be touched by the sun and still live.

But it _is_ the sun who is holding him. Drawing him closer against a solid body, protecting him from further assault.

_Surya_. His father.

Karna folds into the embrace as though the muscles in his limbs have been cut. He wants to speak - feels that he _should_ but the words will not come. Above his head Surya tracks the progress of Arjuna's chariot, holding Krishna's troubled gaze with his own burning glare.

He is not alone.


	2. Chapter 2

The ground beneath his feet is hard-packed and dry. When he runs little clouds of dust puff up in his wake, leaving a faint trail by which he might be followed. Despite all his efforts he has lost the other children. The game has stretched long but Karna has not seen a single face close to his own age in the better part of an hour. Briefly, he wonders, if the rest have all decided to simply go home.

Had he buried himself too well in his hiding place? Or was he so terrible at seeking that all of them could have passed him by without him noticing?

Coming to a stop he took a breath to get the air back into his lungs, throat parched with the heat. His nose wrinkled. He can't help it. Rain had not visited them in some days and the dust tickles his nose enough that he sometimes surprises his mother with sneezes. A part of him, tired and a little hungry, wishes to give up. If he is not back before a certain hour then he will be scolded. The consequences of such are not ones Karna desires to face.

Yet the other half of him insists that he still look. Doggedly stubborn of him, perhaps, but his conscience would be troubled if he is the only one to have made it safely home. So, picking up his feet, Karna begins to search once more.

He gets nowhere with it - now convinced that his playmates have satisfied themselves with games and are in their homes. It is well near the time he should return as they must have. His mother does not like it if he is late.

Yet his feet drag, just a little, and Karna forces his thin legs into a hop so that he might stand in a puddle of sunlight as though it were water. The light envelopes him in warmth, different from the heavy air, and he turns his face up towards it with his eyes closed.

The backs of his eyelids turn pink and he tries to imagine the world in such a shade. Until the light moves, disappearing as though a cloud has obscured the sun.

Opening his eyes Karna stares, blinking slowly. The sky is clear. Not a wisp in sight. And yet the world seems different than before. Not quite missing something, but close.

When he begins to walk again - a little quicker now, because he is not certain if this bodes some ill tiding - a flicker catches his eye from behind a tree. He stops, frozen, because what he saw looked very much like a shaft of sunlight yet even he knows that cannot be.

The sun does not reside so close to the ground, else everything would be burned. But it's light is unmistakable and he feels himself pulled towards the source by a buzzing curiosity. For every step he takes the feeling intensifies, until Karna can't think of anything else.

He forgets about his mother, about the children he'd been playing with and the prospect of the evening meal. His eyes search for the next wavering bit of light and he follows it, past the tree and deeper into the courtyard.

Then he stops abruptly, every nerve alight and tingling. The source of the light is a man, serene faced and taller than anyone Karna knows. Four arms extend from the stranger's shoulders. A third eye, open where the other two are closed, peers at him.

He cannot quite make out the face. Looking at this man feels similar to staring at the sun itself and his eyes start to burn well before Karna can register much else. He bows his head as low as he can, mouth dry and wonders if he shall be punished for not doing so sooner.

He has seen something he was not meant to. So in his mind the threat of punishment looms real and terrifying.

Nothing happens for what feels like minutes. Karna is not certain what he expected to occur, but it was not this. To be left suspended in a state of uncertainty is it's own punishment, he supposes.

"Lift your head." The man - no, god, for surely he is a god - says. The voice he uses is low but soft. Mild for one who gives off light and warmth like the sun.

Slowly, hardly daring to believe his luck thus far, Karna does. He cannot bring himself to look any higher than the god's bare feet. Ten toes is what he counts, the same as him. Somehow that makes this a little bit easier.

"I am sorry, Lord." Karna coaxes his voice back from the place it had fled to in terror, aware that he sounds small and afraid. "I meant no harm. The light... it made me curious."

He is only being honest. To lie, especially to the one before him, would be a terrible sin.

"There is no shame in curiosity." The voice above his head responds. Then, with a peculiar gentleness the god adds, "Come here."

Heart sinking into his stomach Karna complies. He lowers his head once more, the better to not risk looking where he shouldn't. As he gets closer to the lounging god the air grows warmer, until it feels as though a fire were crackling right before him. He stops, because now there is slightly less than an arm's length between them and he does not want to assume closeness that is not appropriate.

A hand appears in his vision, fingers long and clawed, palm and wrist veined with gold. Between two fingers and a thumb is a little ball. _Laddu_ , Karna recognizes. With the knowledge comes a watering in his mouth, his body remembering that it was hungry before he had become distracted.

"You may have it." The god says encouragingly when Karna does not move.

He stares at the hand, at the offering, and slowly reaches out a hand to accept it. The _laddu_ is pressed into his palm and the god's skin does not burn him. A moment later he feels a hand touching his hair and it startles him enough that Karna nearly drops the treat.

A low chuckle rumbles above his head and Karna does not protest when his hair is gently smoothed back. Sometimes his mother does such a thing, when the night has settled in and he is supposed to be asleep.

"Are you happy where you are, Vasusena?" The god asks. One of his hands holds out another ball of _laddu_ , offering it once Karna has finished the first.

He reaches for it with only a little less hesitance than before, tasting coconut on his tongue. It will ruin his appetite for dinner, perhaps. But it makes his nerves settle and the grumbling of his stomach subside. Karna thinks about the question he's been asked, considers the answer as he tries not to drop the sweet.

"I am, Lord." He says. Because he is. His parents are good, honest people and they love him. He loves them in turn.

The hand petting his hair stops, another having settled on his shoulder at some point. The god's palm alone engulfs his shoulder. It would take nothing to lift him, Karna thinks. Someday, he would like to be near as strong.

"Would you like to come and live with me, Suryaputra?" One long finger brushes his ear, the kundala his mother has taught him to hide growing warm at the touch. Karna cants his head back and stares, too stunned to consider being afraid, powder from the _laddu_ forgotten on his fingertips.

The face which tilts down to consider him is... familiar. In a way. His chest swells with warmth, so much that it feels like it should hurt. It would, maybe, if Karna could focus past the rushing in his own ears.

Smiling, faint enough that one might not catch it at first, the god eases his earring from its hiding place as if to study it. What crosses his face is too quick, too brief, for Karna to catch. But his hands - all four of them - are gentle.

"Lord..?" Karna trails off, unable to complete the thought. He feels very small all of a sudden. More so than when he'd first realized where his curiosity had led him.

"Come and stay with me in Suryaloka where you belong." Letting go the earring Surya cupped his cheek instead. "You can be happy there. Of that, I promise."

"I..." Karna hesitated, swallowing past the dryness in his throat. 

Distantly he heard a rumble not unlike thunder and wondered if he'd made the wrong decision as he answered.

* * *

"He stays with me." Surya answered, before his visitor had the opportunity to properly speak. Nestled in his lap, the comfortable weight of his son shifted. Suryaputra turned his face away from the courtyard and its ever-pleasant light, seeking comfort in his father's chest.

Surya was pleased to give it, one set of arms cradling his son as his third hand swept back Karna's messy hair. He drummed the fingers of his last hand on his knee, waiting for the protest which surely would be coming.

He still owed a penance, after all. And his son still possessed a last layer of armor.

"He has a destiny to fulfill." Raam cautioned softly, looking far too much like the weary man he had been in his last days as a king. "You know this."

Surya favored Raam with his undivided attention, three eyes open and alert. "My son stays. That is final."


End file.
